J.
M. Coetzee, the 2003 Nobel Prize winner in literature, put
his step towards the winning stream after winning the Booker
Prize in 1999 for the bestseller Disgrace. This South African
novelist is a portrayer of a desolate vision of his racially
divided country with a lean allegorical style comparable
to with Franz Kafka and Samuel Becket, for his ruthless
criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality
of Western civilization.

Elizabeth
Costello
J. M. Coetzee
Viking Press; October 2003

Although
it's billed as "a novel masquerading as a biography,"
some readers may speculate that Coetzee's newest is a biography
posing as a novel, or even lectures formed into fiction
(six portions were previously published separately). The
format is instantly intriguing. Elizabeth Costello is a
near-elderly Australian novelist who remains best known
for an early work in which she appropriates James Joyce's
Ulysses character, Molly Bloom. Coetzee tackles problems
of writing, literature, philosophy, and family through eight
"lessons," most of which centre on a lengthy formal
address. The struggle for self-expression comes to a wrenching
climax when Elizabeth faces a final reckoning and finds
herself at a loss for words. This is a novel of weighty
ideas, concerned with what it means to be human and with
the difficult and seductive task of making meaning. It is
a resounding achievement by Coetzee and one that will linger
with the reader long after its reverberating conclusion.

One
need not have read Boyhood, Coetzee's previous autobiographical
account, to appreciate this sequel, as he continues to look
back on his quest for identity and a yearned-for vocation
as a poet. Written from a third-person, present-tense point
of view, but intimately describing the inner life of John.
This slim memoir examines several years of Coetzee's expatriate
life as he flees Cape Town in the 1960s to educate himself
and pursue his destiny in London. And surely it's a bleak
time. A series of failed encounters, sexual and social,
leave the emotionally immature protagonist feeling lonely
and isolated. Though he fails to make his intense and awkward
personality particularly appealing, Coetzee succeeds in
defining the dilemma of the 'artist-as-a-young-man' in sympathetic
if angst-ridden terms that reflect the doubts of those who
decide to devote their lives to literature without any idea
of how they can make a meaningful contribution.

Dusklands
J. M. Coetzee
Viking Press; June 1985

Coetzee's
Dusklands is composed by two
totally different stories: the first one about the Vietnamese
war and the second one about the destruction of a Hottentot
village by a Dutch explorer. The small thematic link between
the two is the violent intrusion of foreigners into national
(tribal) territories and affairs. The original treatment
of the two stories is also completely different. Yet both
of the stories seem to be influenced by Freudian psychology,
and the last one more specifically by Freud's 'Totem und
Tabu'. Dusklands is a fascinating read. It illuminates another
facet (or two) of the human condition. It is deceptively
quick light reading-- subtly profound while intellectually
massive and a delicate jackhammer. However, this piece stays
more or less pasted to the treated themes.